Midsummer's Eve

Midsummer's Eve is the pivotal date on which the long-anticipated Rebellion against human tyranny finally erupts, transforming the Manor Farm into Animal Farm almost overnight. What had been planned only in secret meetings and theoretical debates becomes a sudden, violent reality when the animals, driven past endurance by neglect and abuse, rise up and drive the human beings off the land. This single night and the following day set in motion every subsequent event in the story: the writing of the Seven Commandments, the building of the windmill, the rise of Napoleon, and the long, grinding betrayal of the revolution's ideals.

Background and Immediate Cause

The Rebellion did not occur according to any timetable. Old Major had predicted it might come in a week or in a hundred years, and the pigs had spent three months teaching the principles of Animalism without knowing when the moment would arrive. The immediate cause was the cumulative neglect of Mr. Jones, who had become a drunkard after losing money in a lawsuit, leaving his men idle and the animals underfed. On Midsummer's Eve, a Saturday, Mr. Jones went into Willingdon and got so drunk at the Red Lion that he did not return until midday on Sunday. The men milked the cows in the early morning and then went out rabbiting without feeding the animals. When Mr. Jones finally came back, he went to sleep on the drawing-room sofa with the News of the World over his face, so that by evening the animals were still unfed.

The Uprising

At last the animals could stand it no longer. One of the cows broke in the door of the store-shed with her horn, and all the animals began to help themselves from the bins. The noise woke Mr. Jones, who immediately came to the store-shed with his four men, whips in hand, lashing out in all directions. This was more than the hungry animals could bear. With one accord, though nothing of the kind had been planned beforehand, they flung themselves upon their tormentors. Jones and his men, who had never seen animals behave like this before, were butted and kicked from all sides and, after only a moment or two, gave up trying to defend themselves and took to their heels. All five of them fled down the cart-track that led to the main road, with the animals pursuing them in triumph. Mrs. Jones, seeing what was happening from the bedroom window, hurriedly flung a few possessions into a carpet bag and slipped out of the farm by another way, followed by Moses the raven. The animals slammed the five-barred gate behind the fleeing humans, and the Manor Farm was theirs.

Immediate Aftermath and Symbolic Acts

The animals could hardly believe their good fortune. Their first act was to gallop in a body right round the boundaries of the farm to make sure no human being was hiding anywhere. Then they raced back to the farm buildings to wipe out the last traces of Jones's hated reign. The harness-room was broken open, and the bits, nose-rings, dog-chains, and the cruel knives used for castrating pigs and lambs were all flung down the well. The reins, halters, blinkers, degrading nosebags, and whips were thrown onto a rubbish fire. Snowball also threw onto the fire the ribbons with which the horses' manes and tails had been decorated on market days, declaring that ribbons should be considered clothes, which are the mark of a human being. Boxer fetched his small straw hat and flung it onto the fire as well. Napoleon then led them back to the store-shed and served out a double ration of corn to everybody, with two biscuits for each dog. They sang 'Beasts of England' from end to end seven times running, and then settled down for the night and slept as they had never slept before.

The Morning After and the Naming of Animal Farm

They woke at dawn as usual, and suddenly remembering the glorious thing that had happened, they all raced out into the pasture together. From a knoll that commanded a view of most of the farm, they gazed round them in the clear morning light, realizing that everything they could see was theirs. In the ecstasy of that thought they gambolled round and round, hurling themselves into the air in great leaps of excitement. They rolled in the dew, cropped mouthfuls of sweet summer grass, and kicked up clods of the black earth. Then they made a tour of inspection of the whole farm, surveying with speechless admiration the ploughland, the hayfield, the orchard, the pool, and the spinney. They filed back to the farm buildings and halted in silence outside the door of the farmhouse, which was theirs too but which they were frightened to enter. Snowball and Napoleon butted the door open, and the animals entered in single file, tiptoeing from room to room in awe of the unbelievable luxury. A unanimous resolution was passed on the spot that the farmhouse should be preserved as a museum and that no animal must ever live there. The pigs then revealed that they had taught themselves to read and write, and Snowball painted out MANOR FARM from the five-barred gate and in its place painted ANIMAL FARM. After this, Snowball climbed a ladder and inscribed the Seven Commandments on the end wall of the big barn, establishing the unalterable law by which all the animals on Animal Farm must live for ever after.

Significance and Recurrence

Midsummer's Eve is not only the origin of the Rebellion but also becomes one of the two annual anniversaries on which the gun captured from Jones is fired, the other being October the twelfth, the anniversary of the Battle of the Cowshed. The date thus enters the farm's ritual calendar as a sacred moment of origin, repeatedly celebrated to reinforce collective identity and loyalty. Yet as the years pass and the revolution degenerates, the memory of what actually happened on that night becomes increasingly distorted. The pigs rewrite history so thoroughly that Snowball, who was a leader in the uprising, is eventually declared to have been Jones's secret agent from the very start. The original meaning of Midsummer's Eve—a spontaneous, unified act of liberation—is gradually buried under propaganda, and the farm itself is finally renamed back to Manor Farm, completing the circle that began on that transformative night.